Hemswell Boot Fare

For some time the junk in dad's house has been weighing me down and I've told several people it's my intention to release much of it "back into the wild".  Dad loved going to boot fairs, especially the big one at the old Hemswell airbase, north of Lincoln.

So, having hired a van, I set off for Hemswell at 5.00 am this morning loaded with pictures, telescopes, a "decorative" ship's wheel and all manner of miscellaneous stuff.

In some ways it felt sad letting his old junk go for low prices (no one wants to pay much at boot fares), but in others it was a very positive experience as lots of people went away with smiles on their faces, giving me the feeling that some of dad's old things would be cherished anew.

At about 2pm, as the fare was thinning out, I sold everything that was left to a dealer with a pitch a few metres away for the princely sum of £15.  But overall I'd collected over £300 and was able to leave with an empty van and a lighter heart, having felt that I'd taken another step in clearing his affairs with a degree of humour and dignity, as I think he would have wanted.

Goodbye Miri?

I'm now back in the UK and hopefully looking at the home run to selling dad's house.  It was good to spend time back in Miri following our holiday in Vietnam.  One evening Sue and I did a walk around the Shell residential campus near her apartment.  We'd often done this walk before, but now the bungalows are steadily being demolished and the area turned into a nature park.  The last time I'd been was the evening before I set off to be at dad's bedside in February and we had seen hornbills flying in the distance.

While I was in the UK Sue got to see more of the hornbills, who seem to be a nesting pair and on this occasion they posed for us in a tree only thirty or forty metres from where we were walking.  I got my camera out and snapped loads of photos as the two birds hopped around the branches striking a variety of poses for me.  They are the strangest of creatures and who'd have thought they have such beautiful eyelashes?

Getting such a good view of the hornbills was an appropriate way to finish my time in Borneo as I'd so often seen them before, flying in the middle distance at dawn and in the KL aviary, but never at such close range in the wild and for so long.  It also felt like I was dealing with unfinished business as my departure from Miri in February had been in such a rush and this time I was able to leave at my pace and on my terms.

Goodbye Miri, goodbye hornbills.  Will I ever see you again I wonder?